Labor Relations, Labor Relations Law and Public Policy

Il est assez frappant dans le domaine des sciences sociales, ici au Canada, qu'on ait semblé négliger les résultats des recherches en relations industrielles, pour l'élaboration de la législation qui gouverne les relations du travail. Les législateurs ont été peu enclins à introduire dans la loi des modifications suffisamment stables donnant aux gouvernements la liberté d'action requise pour faire face aux conflits industriels.Les analyses théoriques de l'économie ont minimisé l'importance des politiques en matière de relations industrielles dans une politique économique nationale. Les résultats pratiques, à introduire dans une analyse économique d'ensemble, rendent le changement difficile. Il reste encore beaucoup d'analyse à faire pour connaître l'effet de la législation ouvrière sur le marché du travail ainsi que l'effet des activités de ce marché sur la politique économique.La législation ouvrière a ajouté et mêlé des éléments du marché des relations de travail de telle sorte que le comportement de ce marché diffère de celui d'un marché économique comme on le conçoit traditionnellement. Principalement, la structure du marché semble avoir institutionalisé le conflit et limité la possibilité d'innover.La législation canadienne semble avoir compartementalisé ses propres activités à l'intérieur du marché du travail de sorte qu'un nombre d'efforts législatifs se poursuivent sur le plan économique sans y retrouver une relation entre eux. Les structures syndicales et patronales sont affectées par l'institutionalisation du conflit que l'on trouve implicitement dans la législation canadienne.Il est nécessaire d'avoir plus d'études sur la façon dont les marchés du travail et les relations industrielles devraient être agencés pour être plus efficaces. Ceci a été réalisé avec un certain succès en Europe, et on retrouve aux Etats-Unis des tentatives dans ce sens. Au Canada, les efforts se sont limités à l'agencement des exigences générales des politiques ouvrières à l'intérieur des conclusions tirées des politiques monétaire et fiscale de notre économie.In this address the author explains how and why, legislation in Canada appears to have compartmentalized its own activities within the labour market so that a number of legislative efforts are continued through the economy with little relationship one to the other.** This paper tvas presented at the First Meeting of the Canadian IndustrialRelations Research Institute, held at McGill University, July 6th, 1964

The Task Force Report

Le Rapport Woods est un de plusieurs de son genre à être publié depuis ces dernières années : d'autres couvrent la négociation dans les services publiques, la négociation soumise à certaines juridictions provinciales, et la position qu'elle occupe par rapportaux objectifs économiques du Canada. Ces rapports discutent beaucoup de points semblables, mais utilisent des approches fort différentes aux points de litige soulevés par la négociation.Le Rapport de l'Équipe spécialisée en relations du travail occupe une position unique parmi ces rapports, en ce sens qu'il tente d'éclaircir les intentions dans une négociation et sa signification pour l'économie, le Rapport offre même un énoncé clair du fondement utilisé pour évaluer les techniques de négociation. Il exprime clairement qu'on ne doit pas procéder à une restructuration des procédures de négociations qui puisse priver l'économie de solutions partagées par le travailleur et l'employeur. Le Rapport rejette des formes de contrainte même là où la contrainte semblait inévitable.Un cadre conceptuel autre que la convenance manque à la forme pure d'analyse du phénomène de la négociation, et cette forme n'est pas sans inviter des conflits.À notre avis l'Équipe spécialisée ne réussissait pas à expliquer l'utilité de la négociation et ne l'évalue pas d'une façon analytique, malgré qu'elle demande aux Canadiens d'appuyer la forme de négociation collective.Cinq secteurs majeurs créent une difficulté dans la négociation : 1 ) l'antipathie publique face à la grève ;2) une intervention gouvernementale inepte ;3) l'attribution au mécanisme de négociation de rôles qui ne lui sont pas appropriés ;4) les problèmes techniques face à la loi ;5) la faillite des personnes impliquées dans la négociation à respecter la loi.L'Équipe spécialisée considère la grève comme un catalyseur injecté dans la prise de décision concernant le travail, et ne l'intègre pas comme partie réelle du mécanisme de négociation. À notre avis, elle devrait le faire.Nous croyons qu'une approche plus large à la question aurait pu modifier le jugement de l'Équipe spécialisée sur le rôle que le gouvernement doit jouer en relations industrielles. Nous aimons croire que le gouvernement jouera un rôle plus important dans le champ des relations industrielles, quoique cet espoir semble contraire à l'idée avancée par l'Équipe spécialisée.L'analyse de l'Équipe spécialisée prouve bien la nécessité de réorienter l'activité gouvernementale. C'est douteux par contre qu'elle ait réussi à prouver la minimisation impliquée dans sa preuve, du rôle prochain du gouvernement. Ce n'est pas suffisant que le gouvernement se limite à la considération des disputes relevant de la négociation collective. Le Ministère du Travail doit pouvoir non seulement régler les disputes mais aussi coordonner les relations industrielles et ses politiques générales touchant l'économie. La seule administration des décisions politiques touchant les champs de crise ne répond pas aux besoins et restreint la discussion des relations industrielles à un champ d'analyse beaucoup trop étroit.The author gives a philosophical analysis of the general tenor of the Woods' Report, and provides a brief appraisal of its observations, particularly in regard to collective bargaining

Categorized bibliography for a conceptual model of salt marsh management on Merritt Island, Florida

Enclosed is a bibliography of 556 published articles, technical reports, theses, dissertations, and books that form the basis for a conceptual model of salt marsh management on Merritt Island, Florida (Section 1). A copy of each item is available on file at the Florida Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit, Gainesville. Some relevant proprietary items and unpublished drafts have not been included pending permission of the authors. We will continue to add pertinent references to our bibliography and files. Currently, some topics are represented by very few items. As our synthesis develops, we will be able to indicate a subset of papers most pertinent to an understanding of the ecology and management of Merritt Island salt marshes. (98 page document

Simulating future value in intertemporal choice

The laboratory study of how humans and other animals trade-off value and time has a long and storied history, and is the subject of a vast literature. However, despite a long history of study, there is no agreed upon mechanistic explanation of how intertemporal choice preferences arise. Several theorists have recently proposed model-based reinforcement learning as a candidate framework. This framework describes a suite of algorithms by which a model of the environment, in the form of a state transition function and reward function, can be converted on-line into a decision. The state transition function allows the model-based system to make decisions based on projected future states, while the reward function assigns value to each state, together capturing the necessary components for successful intertemporal choice. Empirical work has also pointed to a possible relationship between increased prospection and reduced discounting. In the current paper, we look for direct evidence of a relationship between temporal discounting and model-based control in a large new data set (n = 168). However, testing the relationship under several different modeling formulations revealed no indication that the two quantities are related

BOLD and its connection to dopamine release in human striatum: a cross-cohort comparison

Activity in midbrain dopamine neurons modulates the release of dopamine in terminal structures including the striatum, and controls reward-dependent valuation and choice. This fluctuating release of dopamine is thought to encode reward prediction error (RPE) signals and other value-related information crucial to decision-making, and such models have been used to track prediction error signals in the striatum as encoded by BOLD signals. However, until recently there have been no comparisons of BOLD responses and dopamine responses except for one clear correlation of these two signals in rodents. No such comparisons have been made in humans. Here, we report on the connection between the RPE-related BOLD signal recorded in one group of subjects carrying out an investment task, and the corresponding dopamine signal recorded directly using fast-scan cyclic voltammetry in a separate group of Parkinson's disease patients undergoing DBS surgery while performing the same task. The data display some correspondence between the signal types; however, there is not a one-to-one relationship. Further work is necessary to quantify the relationship between dopamine release, the BOLD signal and the computational models that have guided our understanding of both at the level of the striatum.This article is part of the themed issue 'Interpreting BOLD: a dialogue between cognitive and cellular neuroscience'

Economic probes of mental function and the extraction of computational phenotypes

AbstractEconomic games are now routinely used to characterize human cognition across multiple dimensions. These games allow for effective computational modeling of mental function because they typically come equipped with notions of optimal play, which provide quantitatively prescribed target functions that can be tracked throughout an experiment. The combination of these games, computational models, and neuroimaging tools open up the possibility for new ways to characterize normal cognition and associated brain function. We propose that these tools may also be used to characterize mental dysfunction, such as that found in a range of psychiatric illnesses. We describe early efforts using a multi-round trust game to probe brain responses associated with healthy social exchange and review how this game has provided a novel and useful characterization of autism spectrum disorder. Lastly, we use the multi-round trust game as an example to discuss how these kinds of games could produce novel bases for representing healthy behavior and brain function and thus provide objectively identifiable subtypes within a broad spectrum of mental function

Loss Aversion Correlates With the Propensity to Deploy Model-Based Control

Reward-based decision making is thought to be driven by at least two different types of decision systems: a simple stimulus–response cache-based system which embodies the common-sense notion of “habit,” for which model-free reinforcement learning serves as a computational substrate, and a more deliberate, prospective, model-based planning system. Previous work has shown that loss aversion, a well-studied measure of how much more on average individuals weigh losses relative to gains during decision making, is reduced when participants take all possible decisions and outcomes into account including future ones, relative to when they myopically focus on the current decision. Model-based control offers a putative mechanism for implementing such foresight. Using a well-powered data set (N = 117) in which participants completed two different tasks designed to measure each of the two quantities of interest, and four models of choice data for these tasks, we found consistent evidence of a relationship between loss aversion and model-based control but in the direction opposite to that expected based on previous work: loss aversion had a positive relationship with model-based control. We did not find evidence for a relationship between either decision system and risk aversion, a related aspect of subjective utility

Counselor Preparation in Crisis, Trauma, Grief, and Neurocounseling

Crisis, trauma, and grief are common themes in counseling while neurocounseling is a relatively new term that has increased presence in counseling. However, little is known about the current status of CACREP programs offering courses directly preparing counselors to address these concerns. This descriptive study analyzed CACREP programs (N = 392) to determine how many counselor education programs offered courses in each special topic. Results indicated that programs offered crisis courses at the highest rate (62.2%) compared to trauma (41%), grief (21.2%), and neurocounseling (5.1%). These results examined program offerings immediately following the CACREP 2016 Standards revisions and may be used as a foundation to see how the new standards influence course offerings in the future

Computational phenotyping of two-person interactions reveals differential neural response to depth-of-thought.

Reciprocating exchange with other humans requires individuals to infer the intentions of their partners. Despite the importance of this ability in healthy cognition and its impact in disease, the dimensions employed and computations involved in such inferences are not clear. We used a computational theory-of-mind model to classify styles of interaction in 195 pairs of subjects playing a multi-round economic exchange game. This classification produces an estimate of a subject's depth-of-thought in the game (low, medium, high), a parameter that governs the richness of the models they build of their partner. Subjects in each category showed distinct neural correlates of learning signals associated with different depths-of-thought. The model also detected differences in depth-of-thought between two groups of healthy subjects: one playing patients with psychiatric disease and the other playing healthy controls. The neural response categories identified by this computational characterization of theory-of-mind may yield objective biomarkers useful in the identification and characterization of pathologies that perturb the capacity to model and interact with other humans